Back on schedule ... but with distractions ...

I'm back on schedule posting on Friday evening, but only just - it's almost midnight. It may click over to Saturday morning before I hit the publish button, let's see how I go!

This week has been a busy one, but also one with distractions. I stitched Week 17 of the tiny nine patches, and I'm super happy with them:

Some more genuinely old fabrics used again in those blocks, some icky shadows in that picture from taking photos late at night. A great photographer I am not, and more evidence of that to follow haha!

During the day on Monday I cut out a whole lot more one inch squares in readiness for the blocks above, and also for selecting in upcoming weeks. Little Mary was here for the day, and while I worked at the cutting table, she played with her Sylvanian Families that I have set up in the sewing room. 

Mary tells me she'd like to learn to sew some day, and it makes my heart sing. You can be sure I'll love helping her use the sewing machine when she's older.

I don't know if you remember, but during the Xmas holidays, one of the things I hoped to get back in progress was Camo's aviation themed quilt. I've been looking back thru the blog to see if I can figure out how long ago it was that I last worked on it, and I actually can't find any sign of it so far. So I'm going to say that it has probably been at least ten years. Perhaps more. But today I added two more rows, I'll add a further two rows and a border and hand it off to be quilted.

Even though he's an adult now, Camo tells me he'll still be thrilled to have it. Which gives me a tiny pang of guilt that I didn't make time to finish it much earlier. I think in the past I had some anxious thoughts that I didn't have enough of the fabric in the sashing strips. Because I don't remember what my original plan was, I'm going to make it work with what I have, and that will be just fine. It's fun doing some simple piecing, it has been a while!

And I promised last week that I'd share the pants that I made, this picture is not flattering for them, but here goes:

The pants on the far right were the first ones I made - I bought a cigarette pants pattern and wanted to use a less loved fabric to try it out. The fit was okay for the most part but I wanted the legs to be more fitted, so I took a half inch off each side of the legs before making the pants in the middle, and I'm very happy with them. And because I had enough of the houndstooth fabric left over I made the pencil skirt. These are made from stretch suiting, so I was able to use the coverstitch machine to do the hemming which I just love!

That's a warts and all picture, you can see I didn't match the stripes super well, but it's not really noticeable unless you're looking hard. And I did a little split in the bottom of the seam, I don't know what that is called (being a beginner garment sewer and all) but it just adds a little something to the look of the pants. I'm looking forward to being more brave and trying a few more things. Next on the list is a top, and I've bought some linen and prewashed it, so when I have a stretch of time that's what's coming up on the garment sewing agenda.

Well, that's all the action in the sewing room for this week, I don't know how much sewing time I'll have in the coming week, but I'm sure to keep you posted. Chatter soon!